Pink POW-Her Ranger

For our second home bout of the season, I decided to feature one of our Team Captains, Pink POW-Her Ranger, as the poster girl.  And why?  Because she's flippin' awesome.  'Nuff said.

Instead of just posting the finished poster, I thought people might be interested in seeing a sort of breakdown of how I work on these drawings.  So first thing's first.  Research!  Yes, research.

When I'm drawing actual people, I try really hard to strike a balance between my comic/cartoon style and maintaining a believable resemblance (instead of generalizing all of their characteristics).  So, before I even pick up a pencil, I start by gathering a bunch of photos.  Seriously.  If you were to peak over my shoulder at my computer, you'd be convinced that I was stalking them...

Aaanway, I study the photos as best I can, not only so I can get a feel for the person's face and physique, but also an understanding of how that person stands, how they carry themselves, how they move their bodies.  Oh, and their boutfits :P  From there I draw at least a dozen or so tiny, thumbnail sketches until I come to a pose that I like.  That's when I move on to the pencil sketch.    

My original pencil sketch, scribbley notes and all!

  

After the pencils are done (I use the term "pencils" interchangeably with "sketch" by the way), I scan it at a high resolution to Adobe Photoshop. The sketch is actually pretty small--only about 5 or 6 inches tall.  Because the flyers we have printed are 11"x17," I resize the sketch to about that size.  Normally, taking a small image and resizing it larger is a bad idea because of loss of quality (like when an image pixellates), but in this case I don't mind.  I'm actually going to wind up "tracing" my new "inks" (the outlines) over the pencils anyway, so that I'll wind up with a new, large, high quality drawing.

Image 1-Blue sketch/pencils, Image 2-Black Ink layer over blue pencils, Image 3-Inks (line drawing) layer

Before I start inking, I adjust the sketch color to something other than black.  This helps me see which sections I've already inked and which parts still need to be.  If you look closely at the first drawing (the blue sketch), you'll also notice that I edited certain parts of it.  For example, I realized that for a foreshortened view of her leg (the one that comes out in front), it needed to be "shorter" than how it was drawn originally.  I can't remember, but I may have also edited the size of her head.  My anime-loving background has left me with a tendency to draw heads a bit too large for the necks that support them...

After I'm done editing the pencils, I move on to inking.  I create a new layer over the sketch layer to draw on (for those unfamiliar with Photoshop, think of it as placing tracing paper right on top of your drawing).  I stick with a small brush size (5 pt) and begin tracing my inks over the pencil lines.  The middle image is what the drawing looks like when I have my inks layer on top of the sketch.  Once I'm satisfied with the inks, I then discard the sketch layer.  That's what you see in the third image--A clean line drawing (my inks layer by itself).

Image 1-Grayscale shading layer, Image 2-Flat colors, Image 3-Grayscale shading with flat colors.

All layers are sitting underneath the inks layer.

After the inks are finished, I can choose to either start shading (image 1) or adding in flat colors (image 2).  It doesn't particularly matter which step I do first, as long as I do both on separate layers underneath my inks layer.  The shading is done with a couple different shades of gray, trying to keep in mind where my light source is.  Flat colors are easy enough--Just stay within the lines!  After both are done, I change my shading layer to sit transparently over my flat colors (I set the shading layer to "Multiply").  That's what you see in image 3.  It's gettin' there, but the drawing looks a little muddy, doesn't it?

Image 1-color adjusted shading layer, Image 2-flat color layer combined with adjusted shading

Images 3 & 4-close up detail shots.

 I then take the shading layer and edit the color balance.  For the shading that sits on warmer colors (like her skin and anything pink), I adjust the color from gray to something warmer.  Cooler colored regions have their shading changed to cooler tones as well.  Image 1 is what that shading layer looks like after I'm done making my adjustments.  Image 2 is what the drawing looks like with the adjusted shading layer added in.  Now Pink [POW-Her Ranger] has gone from looking sort of pallid and lifeless to ready to kick some arse!  Oh, but there's more.

It is at this stage that I allow myself to work on all the little details that really make an image pop.  As you can see from the close-up images, I added in a bunch of details like her eye-make up, her flushed cheeks, the dull shine on her elbow pad's plate and all of the ridiculous little pyramid studs on her belt. 

Yeah, I really hated that belt...haha.  And it seems like such a trivial detail to labor over, I know.  But you have to admit that it really helps polish off the final image.

Now the drawing is done and ready to be dropped into the flyer design.  I'm not going to go into how I work on that because I don't even know what I'm doing half the time...hahaha.  But I'll leave you now with a look at the flyer she was featured on.

By now I've designed a handful of different bout posters, but this one is still my favorite!

Fonts used: Circus, Feast of Flesh BB and Market Deco (all found on dafont).